


So We Break And Break Again

by porcupinepeopleskills



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Dark!Skyeward, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1915533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcupinepeopleskills/pseuds/porcupinepeopleskills
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she comes for him, two years later, she has changed and he has stayed exactly the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So We Break And Break Again

When she comes for him, two years later, she has changed and he has stayed exactly the same.

Seeing her dredges up emotions that he’d worked for two years to forget. It’s laughable, really, how weak she makes him. He is a trained killer; a monster, and he would let this girl snap him in half.

(It’s what he deserves. Anyway, he’s not so sure she hasn’t already.)

He looks at her eyes and steels himself for accusation; for cold indifference. He’s not prepared for the bleak desperation he sees there instead.

“Please,” she says. “Come with me.”

Two whole years, and he still cannot bring himself to deny her anything.

(She breaks him out of that prison, and they leave a trail of devastation behind them. It is the first time they kill together, and it is far from the last.)

 

In Minsk, Skye charms a security guard into letting them into a private medical research facility and then stops his heart with a tilt of her head and a slow, savage smile. She steps over him as he writhes and gasps on the floor and turns back to look at Ward, who is frozen in place.

“You coming?” she asks.

Ward stares at the dying security guard and grits his teeth as he struggles not to remember a situation exactly like this, long ago.

“Grant. Hey.” Skye is now standing directly in front of him, and he blinks at her in surprise. He hasn’t seen her move. She cups his jaw in her hands and smiles softly up at him, and he nearly buckles from the strength of the devotion unfurling in his chest. She is an angel. A dark, bloody angel with violence and death roiling just beneath her skin.

“I’m sorry,” Skye murmurs. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“You didn’t,” he says. She smiles at him, open and trusting (just like before), and he feels sick. For the second time, he is lying to her. He isn’t freaked out, because he’d known all along this would happen to her. Raina wanted Skye’s powers. And Raina always gets what she wants.

He must have said the last part aloud, because Skye laughs sardonically. “Raina got in over her head,” she says. “She said she wanted my powers to come to light. I don’t think she considered the end result would involve me crushing her skull.”

Two years ago, the idea of taking a life would have sickened her. Now she revels in death; delights in every broken bone and snapped neck. The naïve girl he had fallen in love with is gone, but he can’t quite bring himself to mourn her loss. That Skye had hated him. This Skye _understands_. This Skye sees the rage and pain and bone-dry emptiness in his black soul and knows it in her own as well.

Ward smiles fondly at Skye’s self-satisfied face and tells himself that this is who she is. This is what she is destined for. Her parents are monsters, after all. He could never have saved her from her heritage.

Skye cuddles into his side that night, warm and drowsy like a child, and Ward runs his fingers through her hair and thinks, _I have failed you_.

 

(Most days, Skye is vibrant and cheerful and ruthless. She strangles a man without laying a hand on him, and afterwards she beams at Ward and crows, “Just like Star Wars!”

Other days, she sits and stares at her hands with empty eyes. “How many?” she asks him. “Ward. How many people?”

Those days, Ward wishes she would kill him too. Slowly, intimately, the way he deserves.)

 

“Why’d you do it?” Ward asks.

(He’s tried telling himself it doesn’t matter why. She is here with him now. Isn’t this what he’s always wanted?)

Skye swishes and spits into the bathroom sink of their grimy motel room in Sydney. He is behind her, perched on the edge of the tub in his boxer briefs. She doesn’t meet his eyes in the mirror. “Do what?”

(She is a force of nature: catastrophic and fiery and _alive_. He is hollow and brittle and broken. Once upon a time he’d dared hope that she could love him, but he’s smarter now.)

Ward presses his palms onto the cool porcelain; stares at the naked curve of Skye’s spine. “Break me out of prison,” he says. “I don’t…” He stops. Swallows hard.

Skye turns to face him, and her eyes are fierce and dark. “You told me once that you wouldn’t turn your back,” she says.

Guilt twists Ward’s stomach. He lowers his head.

“And you haven’t,” Skye says. “Not really. I’m a monster, and you’re okay with that. You’re still here.”

“You’re not a monster,” Ward argues. She isn’t. He’s the monster. “You’re incredible, Skye. You’re perfect.”

She gives him a sad, distant little smile. “No,” she whispers, “I’m not.”

 

"I love you," Skye tells him. She trails her fingers along his collarbone and smiles up at from where her head is resting on his chest.

Ward smiles back at her and curls his fingers in her silken hair. “I love you too,” he says.

(Today, she says “I love you” and she means it. But he knows this cannot last. Someday, when she finds out what he’s done, she will hate him again. They will come full circle. Turn, turn, turn.

It is in her nature to destroy, and no one deserves destruction more than he does.)


End file.
